The Legal Definition

Therefore, based on the scale, systematic nature, and profoundly dehumanising impact, the transatlantic slave trade and its enduring legacies can rightly be considered crimes against humanity under both evolving legal definitions and fundamental ethical principles – principles tragically echoed in later institutionalised systems of racial oppression, such as: 

• South African Apartheid, which itself attempted to justify the subjugation and dehumanisation of indigenous populations through similarly abhorrent ideologies. 

This brutal history finds parallels in numerous other instances of cultural destruction and systemic oppression across the globe, from: 

• The treatment of Indigenous Aboriginal peoples in Australia; 
• The Kurdish people in Kurdistan; 
• The ongoing suffering of Palestinians in Palestine, since 1948; 

All serving as stark reminders of humanity's capacity for inflicting profound injustice and the enduring need for accountability and redress. 

The Second World War stands as another stark testament to this capacity for inhumanity, with the systematic persecution and murder of millions between 1933 - 1945, including:

• An estimated 4.5 to over 10 million Soviet civilians and prisoners of war (many targeted as "Slavs" or communists within the occupied territories where approximately 30 million Russians resided); (33% of the total**)
   
• Around 1.8 million non-Jewish Polish civilians; (5.6% of the total**)
   
• Thousands of Black individuals, mostly of German Colonial subjugation (Togo, Cameroon, Namibia, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania), trapped due to travel restrictions in 1914 (similar to those restrictions placed by Ukrainian authorities in 2022 which saw Black students, tourists, and workers subjected to severe racial profiling and discrimination***),  used as servants and apprentices, subjected to radical socioeconomic laws under the terms of being racially inferior, and also those interred in human zoos, medical sterilisation trials, imprisoned in workhouses, prisons, hospitals, psychiatric facilities, and concentration camps, all having their previous German compliant identity papers replaced with 'Fremdenpass' ('Alien ID') and categorised as Ni***rs; (70% of the total**)
   
• 5,000 to 15,000 homosexual men; (60% of the total**)
   
• 250,000 to 300,000 disabled people; (100% of the total interred from institutions**)
   
• 250,000 to 500,000 Roma and Sinti; (50% of the total**)
   
• Tens of thousands of political opponents and trade unionists; (% Unknown**)
   
• Around 1,700 Jehovah's Witnesses; (50% of the total**) and, 
   
• Approximately 4 - 6 million Jews* (42% of the total**)

*Though scholarly research presents a range of estimates due to variations in the interpretation of historical data, the limitations and potential deceptive intent of records and the methodology of their collation vis-à-vis political and ideological biases, and differing definitions of who was classified as Slavic, Black, Homosexual, Disabled, Roma, Sinti, a Political Opponent, a Trade unionist, a Jehovah's Witness, or a Jew.

The challenges in accounting for undocumented deaths across occupied territories also contribute to these varying figures. It's crucial to emphasise that even the lowest credible scholarly estimates still represent a catastrophic and unprecedented loss of life. The debate among scholars primarily concerns the precise number within a horrific spectrum, not whether a genocide of multiple ethnic minority or social demographic persons occurred.

**Obtaining precise pre-war or Nazi-occupied population figures for every group is incredibly difficult due to fluid borders, displacement, and the Nazis' own inconsistent record-keeping. Therefore, these percentages are estimates based on the most reliable population figures available and should be treated as indicative of the scale of the atrocities.

***International Journal of Discrimination and the Law: Volume 22, Issue 3, September 2022, Pages 244-280.